The Nation Newspaper

Category: Oyinkan Medubi

  • The truth about political posts

    Indeed, true is the aphorism that change is the only permanent thing in this life. I remember clearly that as recently as the 1970s, if you had a government job, you could not be considered to have been gainfully employed. You were there ‘just for the time being… until you could find your feet’. A job with any government agency was not expected to enrich anyone who had just graduated from school. So, job seekers preferred to direct their feet towards manufacturing companies all around the country. That was where the real work was then, and the realer money. Government jobs only taught people to push papers; for that, you did not need to be paid much. Did I mention that unemployment was also low?

    Then something changed. From the eighties through to the nineties, I guess the government began to get so big it thought it could turn all powers to itself and still have a country. So, it broke the back of manufacturing companies, turned the job-seeking boys’ feet in the direction of the government agencies and parastatals, thinking to … I don’t know. What was it thinking?

    Alas! Many years down that lane of thoughtlessness, what do we have? We now have a people conditioned to believe that unless you are employed by the government, you do not have a job yet. This is why a fresh graduate employed in a privately funded school to nurture young minds does not consider himself employed until he can struggle to be absorbed in some local government where he goes to push papers and be paid much. How times change. I remember Lyte’s song of 1847 — change and decay in all around I see. Now, how many nurses are working in private hospitals? Few: most prefer to be paid by the government for sitting down and doing … well, not much. How many certified teachers are not in local, state or national schools? Again, few.

    Yes indeed o. Every Nigerian knows that government is the biggest employer now, and also the least fussy about making sure its job is done well. As a matter of fact, many government workers do not have to report daily at work to be paid. Just look at your MGAs – they scream job abuse to the heavens.

    Talking of job abusers, no group is guiltier than politicians. We have been told that the Nigerian assembly parades the highest paid group of politicians in the world. The Nigerian populace has screamed enough blue murder over that fact till we are all hoarse. Yet the group concerned has not flinched from continuing to collect their illicit gains. But, it is even more illicit when we remember that many of the members are not regular at work and even less regular in the country. We now know where they go: they go to Dubai to read newspapers.

    Government politics, like government jobs, obviously pays the highest and no one asks you for results, except godfathers who only ask for returns. This is why it is possible for people to be desperate about government positions. Sadly, the many stories of politicians killing off their political rivals stem from no other cause but the excessively lucrative nature of those positions. Yet, we all look on.

    In a small town somewhere in a foreign country, someone won an election into the mayoral seat. As he walked to his car on the road the next day, someone called out a congratulatory greeting to him, and hoped that he would have a good term. He graciously accepted the greeting but took pains to point out that the mayoral seat of the town is not won so much as taken in turns to serve their little town.

    Sadly again, that word ‘serve’ has been given various connotations in Nigerian politics. It is only in Nigeria that a politician can campaign for a position claiming to want to ‘serve’ and all along he means to ‘occupy’ the position like an occupation force and ‘serve up’ the people to the god of his palates. Perhaps indeed, the said politicians mean to go and serve the public. Who is to say what someone’s real intention is? Perhaps, somewhere along the line, this plentiful government money becomes a distraction. Who is to say?

    I have often asked myself this question: why are so many people struggling to get into politics, and be elected into some position or the other? I have some answers but I seek a better one of you, dear reader, if you are minded to give it. Basically, it appears to be on account of the ‘free money’ being doled out by the government as so-called allowances and emoluments.  Now, everybody wants their share.

    But how did it come to this? I think one of the reasons appears to be the rather lazy disposition of the Nigerian mentality: as a people, they just love the line of least resistance – to wealth-making, educational pursuit or keeping the law. Nigerians have been known to offer up their mothers, fathers, spouses, children or relatives (in short, their nearests and dearests) as sacrifices at the altar of wealth creation. The relatives are not only cheaper, they do not need to be searched for from the Far East, Far West and Far Indies. They are ready made by the creator, sometimes just for that purpose, if you get what I mean. Worse, on account of this national malaise of slothfulness, it appears even the country’s earlier vaunted quality education is in great peril. And the law? The less said about the people’s attitude to the law, the better. Let’s just say it’s easier for Nigerians to break the law than to keep it.

    Anyway, quite another reason for how all these came to be is that the government has effectively killed private enterprise and made itself the only worthwhile venture for any serious mind in the land. Many factories are closed down; many are working at half or less capacity; many more are groaning under the weight of the costs of doing business in a hostile environment such as this. The only ones not groaning in the land are the government-employed, and it’s theirs not to reason why. But then, some of them have begun to moan under salary failure. So, when you get a situation where a government pays higher emoluments than the private sector of a country, that country is effectively dead. Sooner than later, it is bound to come crashing down under the weight of its own excessive kindness: it finds itself too expensive to run.

    Right now, the people have stopped struggling for themselves, only waiting to get into political posts. Like someone said just today, a political jobber who sets out with nothing begins to construct gargantuan edifices within three months of assuming duty. Yep, that’s only in Nigeria. Why should that be? Naturally, people are ready to maim, gorge or kill anyone who gets in the way of their edifices. Can you blame them? I blame the conditions that breed their actions.

    It is important to act now; we can begin by having a charter. The government must, as a matter of urgency, re-empower the private sector again. In a capitalist economy, the government can only act in a regulatory capacity, a sort of controller, not the one doling out, except in defence, internal affairs and education.

    It is also important to find a way to truly discourage people from going into politics to rip the nation off. For a start, we can begin to insist that anyone seeking political office must be gainfully employed and must show it. Let us chew the fat on these ones for a while.

  • Why we need to be serious about educating the herdsmen

    It’s good to be with you again this week, dear reader; thank you for asking if I’m ok. I am. Right now, I’m feeling very let down by the fact that President Buhari’s government seems to be tired already. Do you remember how we all rooted for the man as The One? Obviously, the man seems to have sunk beneath the weight of the ropes of responsibility we tied around his neck. Solve boko haram problem; tackle economy; solve boko haram… face security challenges… solve my housekeeping fund problem… As he himself once said, he is but a tired old soldier. So, whatever steam his government may have had seems to be evaporating already because its actions and inactions are as baffling to me as they are to him I’m sure.

    The country’s electricity problem is as bad as ever with no solution in sight. With the swashbuckling entrance into the power fray of the power minister, Babatunde Fashola, one thought that by now, I should have enough electricity and to spare to power my house and garden. Now though, I’m lucky if I get four hours in a day. That’s my reality. Pipe-borne water is still a mirage for many of us urban dwellers. I think rural dwellers are not holding their breath on either one of them. Add to it the fact that people are massively hungry. The list of our expectations could just go on.

    The one that flabbergasted me most was the herdsmen crisis. This government’s new approach to the problem had me doing some mental summersaults. I could not understand nor believe that it actually intended to take about fifty-thousand hectares of land from each state just for herdsmen alone! So, if we were to grant that wish, what would traders take? What would road transporters take? What would corporations take? What would I take, eh?

    There are millions of southerners doing business in the north, but I have never heard of the government asking their host state governments to dedicate any mass land areas to them for their business. Indeed, I have heard of instances where they were denied housing on account of their being different in race, creed, religion, etc. How come then that state governments were asked to give land for cow herding in the form of colonies? If cows take all that land, what will I get? I also need land for my writing business, with plenty of trees and grasses and rivers flowing gently by and housing fish of all tribes like Nigeria … The list goes on.

    Worse still, the government went ahead post-haste to deposit some herdsmen sans their cows in my backyard in Kogi State, Bunu-land to be specific, where I come from by marriage! Why the Kogi State government was so quick to accept this, I’ll never understand. I have prayed for him. I prayed that one day I’ll be able to forgive him. Nevertheless, I consider this to be an insult and an injury! You can therefore understand that I have been fuming from all external orifices since last week. However, I have learnt to be polite. This is why I am politely asking that they be asked to go back to their own land asap, before I close my eyes now.

    In saner democracies, this would amount to the government shutting itself in to devise plots against the people it swore to protect; and that’s a sign it has lost it. For a while, the whole nation was not sure if the government was not of the president’s people by the president’s people and for the president’s people. Not that we’re any surer now anyway. Otherwise, whoever was responsible for that colony idea should have lost his job by now and would forever have to wear the scarlet letter of ignominious idea! Even more unfortunate was the explanation on the Benue killings credited to a serving minister who was said to have tied it to the state’s anti-grazing law. Tch! Tch!

    I sincerely regret that there was not much consultation on that cattle colony proposal before the government went into action, and I think it has found this out by the people’s reactions to its proposition. Even though the government appears to have soft-pedalled, I suspect it has to do with the forth-coming elections. This means it may be ready to pick up the idea should it find itself in the saddle again.

    Yet, there are bigger problems in the land. Believe me, things are bad; people are finding it difficult to get by. So, for the government to attack herdsmen or hate-speech problems and leave weightier matters amounts to the dissipation of energy which can otherwise be more usefully spent on nation building. We need electricity to power every house in the land twenty-four-seven; it will give people jobs. We need pipe-borne water flowing into every house; we need good food on every table with or without cow meat in the land. Let the government spend energy on those.

    Let the government spend energy on making me happy; but it should not waste energy fighting my ‘hate’ speech or sending herdsmen to my backyard. In any case, who is to determine the hatefulness of a speech? Surely, if a speech is ‘hateful,’ has it not flowed from a soul made bitter by suffering? Should a family deprived of its breadwinner by heinous herdsmen bring out sweet words for the government that failed to protect it? Remove suffering and there’ll be nothing but sweet words from the soul. But those who are comfortable have little right to berate the bitter tears of suffering or grief.

    There are alternative ways to solving the herdsmen problem more humanely and permanently, and this column has joined many others in advancing some of these which we are not about to repeat here. One thing is clear. The government must now become proactive in the matter. It must firmly take in hand the system of modernising the herdsmen. It is not enough to say that herdsmen have been roaming around for centuries, so we should leave them to continue destroying people’s lives or livelihoods.

    Now, as we all can see, herdsmen have no designated cattle routes anymore; their routes are everywhere there are greens. So, what happens to our agricultural programme? Or, God forbid, we run out of greens? And, are we all going to feed on cows forever? Do the herdsmen have enough cows to feed one hundred and twenty-million people for as long as Nigeria remains? I’m guessing no to all these.

    Ranching is the modern alternative to cattle wandering that needs to be embraced. Herdsmen need to be broken into the system through education. Education will bring out all its advantages, as good wine needs no bush. Let them be encouraged to begin slowly; as individuals owning their own farms or as cooperatives of owner-occupiers. This is different from the government forming colonies for herdsmen from lands forcefully taken from others. Colonies on others’ lands is the worst form of retrogression possible.

    Clearly, the government must begin to inculcate the systematic education of herdsmen and their children into the school system. Education is one of the surest things that has tied all the tribes in Nigeria together. The government must use that resource judiciously to give them a chance to live at peace with all men. Through education, I believe herdsmen will get to understand that all men strive to live at peace with their neighbours not because they want to but because they have to. It is the surest guarantee to survival.

  • Why is Nigeria Stopping … for cows?

    Why is Nigeria Stopping … for cows?

    What constitutes progress for the country now is industrialising cow-keeping to produce marketable products like milk, cheese, butter, oils, margarine, yoghourt, and other dairy by-products for general consumption. Cows on the move cannot be industrialised.

    Every now and then, you come across a herd of cows as you are driving along on the road and you have no choice but to stop. The alternative is to get ready to buy another windshield or even car or even you. With the heightening of the herdsmen’s crisis in Nigeria, it appears it is not only motorists that are stopping now; Nigeria is also stopping… for cows. This means no more progress.

    The indifference the government displays towards the people is so much these days I find myself asking again and again if we are indeed running a democracy. I doubt if anyone even knows exactly what we are running now. The other day, the president told the country, ‘no restructuring’, and he expected us to take it. Now, Nigerians are saying they do not want Fulani herdsmen in their midst because of those ones’ murderous activities and the government is making as if it no longer speaks or understands English.

    The government’s stance on the Fulani herdsmen is all the more baffling considering the number of otherwise productive, law-abiding casualties it has cost the nation. Speculations have been rife as to why this is so. Many have said it is because the president is himself a Fulani man and so he finds it difficult to call his own people to order. My response to that is that it cannot be true, because then it would completely negate his inaugural declaration on being elected when he said he belonged to nobody; and he belonged to all.

    I have also heard it said that the Fulani herdsmen are actually the ‘cow carers’ for other wealthy cow owners such as presidents, emirs, governors, politicians, etc., who are the real owners of the cows. I have said that there is nothing wrong with anyone owning anything in a land of free enterprise. HOWEVER, THERE IS EVERYTHING WRONG WHEN THE ENTIRE POPULACE IS NOW BEING MADE TO PAY, AND SOMETIMES WITH THEIR BLOOD, FOR THE ENTERPRISE OF A FEW PEOPLE, WHEN THERE IS NO NEED FOR IT. That is not only exploitation of those young herdsmen but also exploitation and misuse of the entire country’s resources. It is so lazy and barbaric.

    Free enterprise means that an individual engages in a trade willingly after calculating the cost of production versus the profit margin and still finds it beneficial. He then goes into it. Farming is an enterprise that is as old as man; so is stock keeping. However, no one goes into an enterprise and then makes other people pay for the production, gratis, and then some, e.g. their blood. That is not enterprise. That is dictatorship, wickedness, perversion, evil, objectionable behaviour and sinful. Such a one has no right to call on the name of God in any religion.

    Whoever owns those cows that these young ‘uns push up and down the West African regional bushes had better get up now and begin to strategise on how to pay for the grass their cows eat to grow. It is simple enough to do; it is called ranching. Ranching is the well-known way of keeping cows within specified borders so that other people’s enterprises are not disturbed by one’s own cow enterprise.

    Cows are amoral; therefore, other people’s farms, crops, land, etc., are supposed to be off limits to other people’s cows. But who is to tell them if not the herdsman? If the herdsman himself becomes as amoral as the animals he herds, then the crisis becomes serious indeed as we now do not know where man and animal meet or part…

    Most importantly, letting cows loose on people’s farmlands is taking the easy way out. What happens when we run out of farmlands for these cows to devour, do they go to the Atlantic Ocean? If we are busy using our state resources to keep these cows alive, would that also not spell doom for the Nigerian race, seeing that man cannot live by cow alone? Would food shortage not result?

    From the general discourse on the subject of cow herding, I have heard what appears to be two reasons why ranching is not the method of choice for the Fulani herdsmen. One is that they are nomads, i.e. natural roamers. They say they have been like that for thousands of years and they cannot now begin to change. To this I say, really?

    Every single one of us has had to change and adapt our ways to modern living; which has now included living in houses. Ask anyone, our African ancestors centuries ago had to live up trees because it was safest there. We did not come down from these trees until a few hundreds of years ago. Now, we have so adapted to living in houses we are all asking for the head of IBEDC for not giving us enough electricity to enjoy air conditioners. People adapt to new things as conditions change.

    The other reason I have heard is that the northern region has been overtaken by drought. So sorry for that, but again, I am pointing all my five, no, ten fingers at the northern elites who have ruled this country for most of its fifty-something years and have not managed to impact the lives of the poor people for the better. There is no reason on earth why allocations to the states could not have been used to call water out of the ground through enlarged boreholes, communal irrigation, damming, etc., for growing vast grassy areas and arable lands all over the north.

    The entire West African sub-region has also adopted a very laid-back attitude to this problem of cow herding. The resources meant for solving socio-economic and political problems of most African nations are used by their leaders to live large lifestyles that are far removed from the people, leaving those ones to wander around, well, like cows, in search of sustenance. The problems we are seeing today are testimonies of the failures of governments along the sub-region in particular.

    Now, they even talk of ‘cow routes’ in the sub-region. And I ask, what on earth does that mean? Who mapped out the routes for any cow? Are these routes superimposed on national boundaries? Are we saying that I have to get a passport to go to Ghana but cows do not need to because they have international recognition on these routes? I say that the ‘cow route’ business is nothing but a ruse to cover illegal crossings and activities, hence the murders we are witnessing today.

    NIGERIA IS IN SEARCH OF PROGRESS IN ORDER TO EVEN PRETEND TO ENTER THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY ECONOMIC MARKET. YET, WE ARE TODAY BEING ASKED TO STEP BACK INTO THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY TO ACCOMMODATE RICH MEN’S HERDS OF COWS AND ALLOW THEM TO NIBBLE OUR FARMS OR BE KILLED. HOW PROGRESSIVE IS THAT?

    Herding cows from bush to bush all over the country does not remotely constitute progress. What constitutes progress for the country now is industrialising cow-keeping to produce marketable products like milk, cheese, butter, oils, margarine, yoghourt, and other dairy by-products for general consumption. Cows on the move cannot be industrialised.

    My take on this problem is that the entire sub-region needs to adopt a more pragmatic but modern approach that takes into consideration the fact that every facet of the economy is important and needs to grow. The Nigerian president can drive this purpose-driven approach. For now, let’s just say that I am disappointed in the silence he is keeping on the activities of the murderous herdsmen; and it is glaring that the Kogi State governor does not understand the problem either. But that’s a topic for another day, no?

  • My New Year’s wish for you

    My New Year’s wish for you

    A hearty New Year’s greeting to you. Already, there are so many topics asking you and I to knock heads together on this column. I just hope I will not be the one nursing a headache when all is said and said. No, I don’t wish it would be you either. I think the topic should be the one holding its head by the time we’re through.

    There is first, the unfortunate Benue State massacre; that is very sad indeed. Like everyone has been saying, the federal government’s silence on the murderous activities of the herdsmen all over the country is indeed baffling, considering that it is a road that has been trodden before and has not augured well for us. Boko haram started just like this, with lightning strikes that the then government did not quickly nip in the bud but left it to grow and even fester. Today, we are still battling that little monster. If the government continues to allow the herdsmen problem to nurse and grow into full maturity, it may well turn out to be one battle that the government can never win in the long run.

    Then there is the President’s New Year message which has become something like the state of the nation address. Since my English is not very good (not being a native speaker and all), I could only understand that the president said something to the effect that there was no call to go restructuring the country. Hmm. I just wonder, that’s all. When we have patently obvious cracks in the house because we’re carrying a structure bequeathed to us by an external foe, it is no good for the ostrich to bury its head in the sand and pretend that there is nothing wrong. Let’s hope the flood that comes from it does not sweep the house away before something can be done.

    Again, I have read all the prayers said on behalf of the president’s son who I hear was involved in a motorcycle accident. I pray that the prayers are answered swiftly. I would just like to add that all of us should also pray for him and all other Nigerian children who are stricken right now by illnesses beyond their parents’ capabilities such as cancer, heart problems, kidney problems, etc., for which the state refuses to introduce a policy of care. Pray that the state will care.

    One topic that never ceases to amaze me is the enthusiastic way that people give the new year greeting. I always perceive this hearty, unalloyed joy mixed with a generous dose of hope and wistfulness in a new year greeting, text message or handshake. The smiles that accompany that greeting say it all: this year will and must be better than last year, whether it likes it or not. I must confess that I spent the whole time wondering if people really believe what they’re proclaiming. For instance, I asked myself: did someone really believe that I could have ‘endless joy, sound health, great success, favour beyond my imagination, a relaxed mind, contented heart, blissful life, all my wishes coming true, etc.’?

    So, while others were eating rice, I devoted my time to reading faces, studying handshakes, and examining the hearts of greeters and smilers to see how much they meant these greetings. I came away with something: people believed their new year pronouncements! This was quite surprising. I had thought that people were only pronouncing the greetings because they were stock phrases and banalities that go with the period, and for lack of nothing better to say. But no; someone actually hoped I would have ‘endless joy’ and ‘a contented heart’!

    Now, I have nothing against endless joy. There is nothing wrong with me going around with all of my thirty-two (sorry, I think it’s remaining twenty-nine and a half or so now, having dissipated the rest on sugary substances in my misguided youth) flashing greetings at everyone. The only problem is that last year I got the same greetings and wish for endless joy and I got anything but in course of the year.

    First, I lost a beloved item in the very first part of the year: a beloved ten-year old tree – on which I annually hang my own Christmas hopes, lights, ornaments and desires come every December – to termites. I know, you’re saying thank God, it’s not an animate object. I agree with you, but it was still beloved. Now, I hang my hopes, lights, ornaments and desires on my forlorn porch directly overlooking the gaping hole where the tree used to stand. I tell you, that did not let my joy stretch very far into the year.

    In the course of the year, my ‘sound health’ also became assaulted by forces of unsound judgment. I think the forces were residing in me. Those forces made me eat beyond my body’s carrying capacity and now I am suffering from the disease of the wealthy. I know what you’re thinking: I can still eat in the midst of this recession. Truth is, like every other Nigerian, I find that it is sensible to eat more of the not terribly expensive items, such as garri and amala, and hope that the body would not notice the absence of the terribly expensive ones, like meat and chicken. Well, it did. So, in the course of the year, I found myself hopping from one doctor’s couch to another while they searched for the cause of my weight gain. No, I did not tell them a thing.

    Did they also wish me a ‘relaxed mind’? Yes, they did. Now, that is one I am yet to attain. But how can? Throughout the year, was the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un not hopping mad against the whole world and threatening to blow us all to kingdom come? How could I have a relaxed mind in that circumstance? Was Trump not busy upsetting his entire cabinet, political associates, country, the world, and even me with all his antics? With him in the saddle, man, my previously relaxed mind very soon turned to a beautiful mind, I tell you.

    Then, how do you expect me to sleep when there are all these monies missing from or found outside of Nigeria’s coffers and not one person able to tell me precisely how they happened? Seriously, I found myself lying awake nights wondering at, calculating even, the distance between Ikoyi Towers, Yakubu’s Kaduna House and Abuja Central Bank and drawing imaginary triangles to find the connecting points. Of course, I failed; that’s why I had so many nights of it. Now, I should not mention other things that kept my mind unrelaxed: e.g. Buhari’s health, how relaxed his own mind is, and how he will restructure Nigeria, etc. So I honestly don’t know how far that wish can go.

    And great success? Let’s see. Did you say great success? If we don’t count my weight gain (it’s an annual struggle), my dead tree, the missing or found national monies, I would say yes, I had some. To start with, PU was regular and brought smiles to many faces throughout the year, thanks to my editors who badgered me (that’s what badgers do) until something dropped. I also thank many of my readers whose words of encouragement helped me to sustain the effort. Naturally, my greatest success in the last year was to have been able to join you in ushering in the New Year. For this, we thank God indeed.

    Like a shopkeeper, I have been taking an inventory of my experiences in the last year. What are yours like? After looking at mine, I would want to wish you and myself more hard work, greater achievements, funnier PU, and better luck this year.

     

  • Lessons from Spain: coping with the multinational State

    Nigeria is not a nation. It is a mere geographical expression. The word Nigerian is merely a distinctive appellation to distinguish those who live within the boundaries of Nigeria from those who not.—Obafemi Awolowo in Path to Nigeria Freedom, 1947

    The task now at hand was to devise new modes of human co-existence – arrangements that would replace or by-pass the nation-state. The hegemony of the nation-state and its totalist claim on the individual could escaped only by recognizing that nation and nation-state were concepts embedded in a particular age. If only thought could be diverted from the nation-state and re-orientated around a more sensible parameter, the co-existence of nations and nationalities in Europe and elsewhere could start to be restructured on federalist and autonomist principles.—Peter Alter in Nationalism 1989.

    Obafemi Awolowo wrote about Nigeria when globalization was cutting its teeth while Peter Alter wrote largely about Europe at a time that globalization had become a toddler, but both did  the same thing: interrogate the universality and immutability of the Western model of the nation-state, not only for Europeans but also for Africans and Asians once colonized by European nations. The ongoing controversy about restructuring, particularly President Buhari’s new dichotomy between process and structure certainly requires making connections with efforts in other parts of the world in a global ethos that is struggling with change on many fronts.Globalization is taking more attention away from individual nation-states than before; transnational organizations are causing more problems for individual nations than before; and citizens across the globe are struggling to juxtapose two major issues of globalism: marrying local and international identities and struggling to sustain both.

    It is saying the obvious to argue that Nigeria has been a product of the Western model of the nation-state. Colonization led to creation of Nigeria through amalgamation of several nations and nationalities that had not shared language, culture, religion, worldview, and even aspirations until they were ‘discovered by Frederick Lugard and found qualified for amalgamation, not necessarily for their own reasons or perhaps for a future unknown to the nations at the time they were fused. Even though the United Kingdom, though a multinational state at the time it sent nation builders to West Africa, acted as a typical nation-state within the tradition of Western nation-states, practised as far as it could a unitary system of government at home. But the British chose to think outside the box by choosing to encourage a governance mode sensitive to multi-nationality.

    Consequently, the Nigeria obtained independence from Britain as a federation in which the central and subnational governments shared both powers and functions, best illustrated in three categories of power sharing: Exclusive, Concurrent, and Residual. Fiscal federalism was the rule of the game of governance between the two levels: federal and regional governments. Put simply, Britain left behind a political system for managing a multinational state that it did not have for England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales in its own United Kingdom. At the time that Nigeria assumed independent nationhood, there were just four federal systems in all of Western Europe: Germany, Switzerland, Belgium, and Austria. All other nations—homogenous and heterogenous—were unitary. In fact, it took the United Kingdom another 60 years after Nigeria became a federation for Nigeria’s designer and creator, the UK, to experiment with a para- or pro-federal system for three of the Kingdom’s nations: Scotland, Wales, and Ireland.The jury is still out on where the UK is heading in term of political and economic structure of governance.

    Nigeria was a federation in the proper sense of the word until the Biafra-Nigeria War. Financing the civil war under a military rule threw up a new system which grew between 1967 and 1979 into a cosmetic federalism that later grew into a full-blown unitary system under the 1999 Constitution that had become since its appearance a source of controversy between federalists and regional autonomists and advocates of political and economic centralism in Nigeria’s multinational space.

    Of course, the Nigerian military started as a colonial institution. Military rulers were in the UK where the proper unit of government was the nation-state. In the tradition of being able to give only what a person has, military rulers gradually re-designed Nigeria into a unitary system with the hope that such homogenization would create the solidarity that had been a source of success for organizing people with the same language, culture, religion, worldview, and aspiration into a nation-state managed generally in a unitary manner. After the first thirteen years of military rule, departing military rulers bequeathed in 1979 a constitution that had substantially de-federalized Nigeria. The second republic started in 1979 was terminated by a coup de’etat at the end of 1983, leading to another thirteen years of military rule which came to an end with the 1999 Constitution, a constitution that has since its appearance been a source of controversy between advocates for return to federalism and those who preferred unitary governance.

    One trait that featured in the various military governments between 1966 and 1999 is the belief that Nigeria’s problems came from absence of political and fiscal centralism. Each new military dictator increased the number of states until the country had 36 states, that are now referred to as federating units in what Nasir El-Rufai had once characterized as a federation without federalism. Many people had argued that military dictators who changed Nigeria from a federal to unitary system wanted a system close to military culture. Others believed that military dictators believed that a system that aspired to function like a unitary nation-state system was superior to a multinational and multicultural system.

    It is, therefore, not surprising that the two retired generals who had served as elected presidents: Olusegun Obasanjo and Muhammed Buhari act and talk as if they are obsessed with running Nigeria like a homogenous state. It is also not surprising, given the attitude of the two presidents to the mode of thought that a state that seems like a homogenized society is the one best for Nigeria, just as it is not surprising that the ambition of former military rulers serving as civilian presidents is attainment of unity and that no sacrifice should be too much to pay for unity, even if citizens have to live in an underdeveloped polity and economy; even if they lack access to electricity, good education, and other sources of social and economic progress.

    Today, Spain issimilar to Nigeria in some respects. It is culturally a multinational state that its rulers since 2010 had wanted to run like a culturally homogenous nation-state, largely because of the belief by rulers in Europe and many of its former colonies that governing multinational states like a homogenous one is more likely to succeed better than accepting the dynamics of multicultural states.

    When Chief Awolowo said over 60 years that federalism is the only effective mode of governing a multinational state, he was thinking more critically than his contemporaries, rather than acting as an irredentist. He was not only historically-minded like other intellectual leaders; he was also proffering a solution to a polity that could not benefit from methods of governing homogenous societies. Today, even centuries-old homogenous states are showing interest in nudging the European Union in the direction of a super federal state for economic, social, and security reasons. It is instructive that Emmanuel Macron, the president of a country that is often cited as the poster child for creating the world’s first modern nation-state is the champion for transforming EU into a federal state for survival in a more competitive global economy.

    As this column observed last week, adopting the route of inter-elite negotiation for re-federalization of Nigeria alone is likely to be less effective than creating a mass movement or political party. People with the mindset that pushed Nigeria from federal to unitary system are not likely to be persuaded easily with superior arguments alone. They need to be made to see where the minds of those seeking change are. They need to be given empirical evidence that millions of voters want more than unity and that there is more danger than is apparent in a system that is only able to get unhappy and poor people united and at the same time hungry. The danger in resisting calls for federalism includes creating  populations that can espouse irredentism and separatism, which Nigeria can ill afford.

  • My Christmas chicken story

    Nigerians are left to read between the lines on who is really responsible for my not being able to go out to buy chicken because of fuel: the federal government, the oil marketers or the social, political and economic saboteurs

    I trust you had a great Christmas, fuel or no fuel. Let me tell you about the Christmas I had. Some days before Christmas, I wanted to go buy some chickens to celebrate with, but I had two problems: money and transportation. In those days, people used to check their purses to see what was there. These days, people check their phones. Their purse/account is just a click away. Is that advancement or what? I honestly don’t know, because in those days, if your purse got snatched, you could always say thank God, the bank account was still safe. Now, if the phone is snatched, its goodbye to … Do you thank the other place?

    Anyway, since I still live in those days, I checked my purse and found that what was there could not even bring a chicken feather home. So, I did the next best thing. I left my request on the long finger and placed it somewhere noticeable in the house. Luckily, it was noticed and somehow, I counted together enough pennies that would convince a chicken to come home with me for Christmas. All I had to do was now to convince the car to go get it.

    That was easier said than done; for love or money, the car would not budge. In short I had enough fuel to move the car from its stable to the front gate but no further. The fuel gauge read red all over it, just as my account does before salary time. The fuel stations close to me had also shaken their heads at me, shut their mouths and finally their gates. I then resolved to do what Nigerians do best: pray! I stood at the gate and prayed against every force that was militating against my Christmas chicken. Shortly after, a blessed old lady stopped by and personally handed me a white chicken! Heaven be praised.

    I decided to pray harder; perhaps it would rain more chickens. Instead, someone else stopped by who was in need of a chicken. I then prayed against all temptations, but it was no use; the lady-in-need refused to go away, so I had to hand over my white chicken. After she left, I’m not sure but I think I burst into tears. A few drops of tears later, a young lady known to me stopped by and this time handed me two brown chickens! Seriously! So it is true what they say, givers never lack, but I’m not sure if it does not refer to chickens alone. Believe me, I have given out many things before that never came back: books, money, me…

    Anyhow, I thanked the lady most profusely as I hopped here in there in chicken dance. She had no idea why as she looked at me wonderingly. Instead of explanations, I had only one request: could she please dress them chickens for me – you know, remove the feathers, the oils and the entrails, and possibly read the last one to see what is in my future? Besides, I had to forestall other ladies-in-need…

    The story of Nigeria’s oil is the proverbial never ending story. You know what that is, don’t you? Well, do you recall that when you’re telling your children a nice story, you sometimes get to that part where you need to emphasise some action and you go, ‘and he walked and he walked and he walked and he walked and he walked and….’ until the children join you in the refrain. The reason why you do that is because you want to be sure the children are not asleep while you are spending your last breath amusing them. The other reason is because you know that the story does not have a very large content, so you sort of need to expand its life span from two minutes to ten minutes. You could also be stalling to recover the next segment of the story you probably heard last thirty years ago.

    Anyway, Nigeria’s oil has become that never ending story. In the first place, quite every Nigerian’s life now revolves around that blessed oil. And I am not talking about the monolingual economy where everyone does only oil-speake; always talking about waiting for subventions provided by oil to pay salaries and all. No. The truth is that all of Nigeria is now no better than a mechanic’s workshop with its oil-stained, dirty, oily, glossy, glistering, oozing floor waiting to slip all right thinking and careless people up. And, is this country filled with careless people or what! Or what, eh!

    Let me tell you how. Firstly, oil has been behind the corruption Nigeria has become internationally infamous for. Before oil, Nigeria was quite famous for its groundnut pyramids, cocoa pyramids and palm oil produce pyramids. Now, it has only pyramids of corruption files reaching up to the skies courtesy of the oil proceeds which cannot be sufficiently accounted for. Secondly, oil is responsible for the start and rise of kidnapping as a scourge in Nigeria. From kidnapping oil workers for money, the creek boys have since elevated kidnapping to an industry and have transferred the art inland. Now, anyone in Nigeria who wants to start a business quickly raises capital by kidnapping a relative and joins the remaining relatives to source for the ransom.

    From what I have been able to gather together, there are three personae in the oil story in Nigeria: the federal government, the oil marketers and the unknown political and social bigwigs who bleed the country dry underground. And all of them are careless.

    There are two successes I have ascribed to Buhari’s federal government: being able to claim some victory over the boko haram insurgency and the ability to sustain the steady fuel distribution network. With this Christmas experience however, this last achievement is fast becoming a negative on the score card. Unfortunately, Nigerians are left to read between the lines on who is really responsible for my not being able to go out to buy chicken because of fuel: the federal government, the oil marketers or the social, political and economic saboteurs.

    An account says that oil marketers claim the federal government is owing them billions of dollars because the government insists on subsidising the transportation of fuel to unreachable places in Nigeria. The same account also says that the federal government’s NNPC is the sole importer of finished fuel now, and so there is bound to be trouble. The government claims though that it is supplying the marketers enough fuel but that those ones insist on hoarding it in order to fuel (forgive the pun) the price hike. Yet another account says indeed, enough fuel in being injected into the system but there are some economic saboteurs who double as politicians or society’s bigwigs who siphon most of the fuel underground to sell elsewhere. Worse still, these people are also untouchable; in other words, the government cannot sanction them.

    This is indeed a situation we have on our hands. Oh no, it’s not the lack of fuel that’s the problem but our not being able to determine who is telling the truth. It means the problem is deeper than we realise. If the government is owing the marketers because of the awkwardness of its own policies, then it should pay up. Its utter carelessness to expect others to carry that burden for them. On the other hand, it is also careless for the oil marketers not to be able to account for all the millions of litres they get.

    What I don’t get is that there should be some untouchables that the government cannot honestly and legally bring within the law. If so, I would like to apply here and now to be an untouchable. There is a ‘gbamgbaro’ seller around me I want to discipline… Happy New Year.

  • Dear Santa, here’s a list of what I don’t want for Christmas…

    No matter… what nukes are pointed at every throat on earth, still have yourself a merry time. As we said before, life is short. Who knows how long the person holding the nuke has? We just may get lucky.

    Once again, it’s Christmas, and I have brought my long list for Santa. You don’t believe in Santa? Too bad, but that’s really beside the point, like. Me, I have enjoyed his patronage over the years because he has brought me things like… well… things like… like turkey and other stuff Christmas is made of. So, each year, I have dutifully prepared the list of the things I want for Christmas, stuffed it in the most conspicuous place in the house and been rewarded by the sudden appearance of turkey. No, I do not have a chimney, so I guess Santa comes via someone’s pocket, I really don’t know. Here goes.

    ‘Dear Santa. I have been good this year, honest. I have kept up PU all through the year, no matter the weather or troubles. I know I have occasionally slept on the job, taken some illegal forty winks and all, but those were times I had been overcome by the stress of living in Nigeria. I guess you don’t know anything about that. Nevertheless, I’m not here to moan. I have come instead to talk about the festive season.

    This year, though, I have prepared a different list; I have a list of the things I don’t want for Christmas. No, it has nothing to do with old age. It may be true that I’m no longer able to afford the teeth to sink into that box of chocolates or tub of ice cream so carelessly. These days, I have found to my chagrin that I have to prepare my teeth to even be able to eat anything that has the slightest sugar content, like one banana finger! Imagine!

    First, I brush my teeth with warm water, then give them a pep talk about the body still needing some sugar no matter what the figures or scales are saying. Then comes more brushing after the terrible deed is done and I’m left holding the banana peels. Finally, the prayers bring up the rear. Oh yes, I need to pray that neither will a terrible tooth ache wake me up in the night nor would the hips have increased by morning on account of that one banana. So, for practical reasons, ice cream is the last item on my list.

    While we are still in the kitchen, what else I do not want for Christmas is burnt chicken. I know exactly what you are thinking. You’re thinking that I’m so lucky I still get some chicken to eat. Many people have to imagine it lying on top of their few grains of rice. I apologise deeply for this and I promise to pray harder this coming year that all of us will get to actually see the chicken lying on our plates. Then, we will all be able to appreciate the frustration of eating burnt chicken. Last year, the fire inadvertently overwhelmed my multi-thousand Naira small chicken. I forgive it because life is too short to hold any grudges. I’m just determined it doesn’t happen again. So please, Santa, I don’t need no burnt chicken.

    One thing I definitely do not need this Christmas is any more blackout. As many Christmases as I can remember, there has not been electricity supply to celebrate that day with. Not that the days before or after were any different, it’s just that one would think that the devil would put on his best dress on the Sabbath day. Instead, what we have been having so far has been some kind of orchestrated blackout from NEPA, NEP, PHCN, and now IBEDC on Christmas day! Seriously, one would think there was some kind of relay race, with them passing the stick of darkness on that day. Well, I forgive and overlook what’s past, but I don’t want this it-was-dark-in-the-manger kind of Christmas anymore. For how long are we going to keep using the excuse that electricity had not been discovered when Jesus was born?

    And while you’re working on the electricity problem, dear Santa, please see your way clear to also do something about this dry, dusty, harmattan haze that goes for our own winter here. Why should the rest of the known world enjoy clean snows that add water to the grounds and make plants and other foods grow but all we get here is this dry weather that sucks the life out of us? It makes the sun blaze like lasers and every other thing white! You really need to see some people’s lips during this period. It’s white and chapped. Again, you might say they’re lucky they have lips, but what about their heads? Those are practically white with this sheet of dust covering them like holy halos when you and I both know they are anything but holy.

    The one item that I don’t need most of all this season is any tiding of billions being spirited away by unknown individuals. Even when they are known, it is still painful to me. Unfortunately, there are so many of such tales flying around that my ears are anything but pleased right now. Why should these stories of billions of Naira be flying overhead, passing over my head and refusing to touch down in front of me so that I can at least touch some of it? Why, eh, why? What is my sin? Santa, you either remove these unsavoury tales from Nigeria’s airspace and let them go fly in some other people’s airspaces or you let the jets spiriting these billions of money around touch down in my vicinity. Either way, something’s got to give.

    You remember the Ikoyi Towers’ tale? It involved billions of Nigeria’s currency, but none got to me; yet Christmas is right nigh me. You remember the Mainagate? It also involved billions too being spirited away to places that are off the map; yet, nothing, zilch, zero, zip, nada, nix of it all came to me here in my little corner. Now, everyone tells me Merry Christmas, and all expect me to believe them. Well, I’m not fooled anymore; I know better. Whenever anyone gives me the yuletide greeting, I now know exactly what to think. You guess. Anyway, I don’t need those kinds of tidings hovering over my airspace anymore.

    So, what do I want for Christmas? Well, my needs are very simple. To start with, I would like a new set of teeth that will not begin to shiver and shake at the sight of a bowl of ice cream. That new set should be so strong it can stand the sight of several bowls this season. While you’re at it, please add a new, slimmer waist.

    More importantly, I want world peace. This means essentially that all the nations currently at war should cease and hold their fires while I talk. Thank you. This means that North Korea should understand that no good ever came from squaring up to other people in wars except to display muscles of armoury, after which there will be this deafening silence. It also means that every other nation should understand that everyone came to find the world already in existence and we will all leave it, possibly, still standing. I told you, my needs are simple. Thanks.’

    Most importantly of all, dear reader, I want you to have yourself an awesome Christmas this year. You have earned it. Look at you, you kept with PU through the year! No matter what the situation around you or the world is saying, or what nukes are pointed at every throat on earth, still have yourself a merry time. As we said before, life is short. Who knows how long the person holding the nuke has? We just may get lucky. Happy Christmas.

  • I dreamt once that corruption moved house!

    As it is now, it is looking as if Sisyphus will have to succeed with his boulder before corruption can move house from Nigeria; so let us pray for Sisyphus.

    Moving house is a real harrowing experience. I’ve done it once or twice, the last one close to two decades ago and I don’t think I have truly recovered from it. Up till now, when I am looking for an item, I still remember exactly where it used to be placed in the old house but am entirely clueless as to its exact location in the new one. Sometimes, looking for an item is like searching for a needle in a haystack. I would need a metal detector, a team of detectives and possibly, a forensic laboratory to decipher for me the true significance of the clues (such as rat droppings) that are, may be, leading to my lost item.

    Failing those, I might have to apply to the children to give me the exact location of my lost item on a compass. When you vaguely believe sometimes that your gold necklace is on your dresser or your neck, your child may tell you that he has used it to tell his girlfriend how much he loves her. You know, one of the reasons why you have children is so they can dispossess you of your things as easily as autumn shaves leaves off trees.

    Yet still, the item’s location could come to me in a dream. Dreams do things to people. Someone once said that he dreamt he was eating chicken. When he awoke the next day, he found the feathers of his pillow in his mouth. Someone else said he dreamt he had a fight with a neighbour. Next morning, he woke up to go and continue the fight. ‘Ehen, that thing that you said in the dream was very stupid …’ And the fight got truly under way. Such experiences make you never to want to dream. Yet, I know that there be some among us whose heads do not touch the pillow before they go into la-la land, crossing seas, fighting dragons or just shopping with the queen. Such Josephinous dreamers not only hug all the dreams to themselves, they make sure some of us do not get any. I know some around me who claim that in all the years they have been sleeping, they have not recorded as many dreams as they have fingers.

    Dreams, I have been told, reflect inner desires, sorrows and pains. My dream-desire, and I bet yours too, is to hear that corruption has moved house, I mean really moved, in the sense of changing its address, from Nigeria to Never-Never land where dreams derive their contexts. Right now, the world capital of corruption appears to be Nigeria. Once, I was in a conversation with some foreigners while outside the country and I was asked the question, what is being done about the level of corruption in Nigeria? I could only mumble something about Nigeria not being the only country in the world going through the painful pangs of corruption; and that many of the so-called western countries had also gone through this phase until they were saved by the bolts of common sense striking their forebears right in the foreheads, bull’s-eye like. And yes, to answer the question, a great deal was being done about the corruption in Nigeria, even if I didn’t know exactly what then. Now, I know for sure very little is being done.

    Anyway, God knows how corruption has come to dominate and overrun the country, wearing, as Achebe once said, many hats, but I guess the problems with us Nigerians are many-fold. First is this national character that is the bane of our national life: doing things impatiently, improperly and with extreme gusto. This is why someone would defraud the state massively, leave office and then seek to go back to that office again because he feels he has not done it well the first time, which is translation for ‘to continue the plundering’. We are so cheap. It is also the reason someone would desperately show off his obscene life-style to the rest of the country without a care to its effect on the said country. How else can one explain how a man comes to have twenty-something cars in his garage, among which is the world’s latest car that arrives Nigeria five minutes after it is released in Europe?

    Just add to the above the problem of mass illiteracy which makes the powerful mass majority too powerless to stop the tiny minority from defrauding them as we have pointed out repeatedly on this page. What the people don’t know can’t hurt them, goes the slogan, which actually translates to what the people don’t know they have cannot be missed. This is why many politicians collect benefits for their constituencies and pocket them; the benefits that is, not the constituencies.

    Then there is the fact that most Nigerians have become dissociated and cut off from their cultural and moral roots that once kept their fathers and grandfathers sufficiently grounded in patriotic fervour and obedience. This means that most of us are walking around without a viable national identity connection – talk of real zombies. This, as we have also said on this page, makes it possible for people to rob, kidnap, kill and destroy others since they have no sense of connection with them. After all, we have met, as it were, in a place where everyman is for himself – the cemetery designed for the living.

    Directly arising from this last point is the fact that many now find refuge in group and factional adhesions, even if many times such adhesions are unhealthy and extremely costly to the nation. The reason is really very simple. It is such groups that offer safety nets and security in times of need. It is a man’s church or Islamic brotherhood that gives him succour in times of financial strain; it is the village people who rally around an individual when he has problems with the state; it is the social club that assists a man in his times of joy or sorrow; etc. Sadly, many times, it is also these groups that offer protection to a man when he defrauds the state.

    Then of course, there is the real fear that corruption persists in Nigeria because it suits the very high-ups who keep it there for their own personal benefits. It suits them that the country has no credible set of statistics of anything or group to work with; it suits them that the country has at best a very dubious and manipulatable accounting system; it also suits the high-ups in the country that I am not among the high-ups.

    So, you see, dear reader, when all is considered and done, we find that the real problem is not so much that of corruption as the things that engender and protect it – the fact that very few Nigerians feel any connection with Nigeria. Corruption is therefore a symptom arising from this very serious absence of patriotic feelings in her nationals. Lack of patriotism is the real culprit.

    In the myth of Sisyphus, the gods gave him the task of rolling a boulder up a hill for eternity as punishment for greed. Attempting to stamp out corruption in Nigeria now is actually rolling a boulder up a hill. Until such a time as the country can engender in her citizens that patriotic fervour which can commit them to both conscious and unconscious actions to benefit the general populace, until such a time, I’m afraid, corruption lives here still. As it is now, it is looking as if Sisyphus will have to succeed with his boulder before corruption can move house from Nigeria. So let us pray for Sisyphus.

     

    • ••I have reproduced this article to celebrate this year’s anti-corruption day. Celebrate it.
  • Let us appoint a Minister for Circus Affairs

    Let us appoint a Minister for Circus Affairs

    So, you see, this circus is well set up. What we need now is someone to direct it for us because it seems the clowns are weeping and the animals are beginning to get on each other and the poles are still short and the audience seems to be waiting and there is chaos everywhere and no one seems to be able to call anyone to order and …. Oh, what’s the point of it all?!

    By now, you would have recovered somewhat from the news that has got all our mouths agape. I have not. I refer to the news, dear reader, that the Imo state governor, Rochas Okorocha, not content with building lifeless statues, has now appointed his sister, Mrs Ogechi Ololo, as, wait for it, the Commissioner of Happiness and Purpose Fulfilment. This means she will head a ministry of happiness. First of all, I am at a loss as to what that means exactly and how it can impact good governance. Will she be charged with dishing out happiness? Well, she should know right away I want a Jacuzzi.

    I became even more worried when an assistant of the governor explained that critics of this genius move of his would soon be eating their hats when the fruits begin to come in. According to this brilliant mouthpiece, Gov. Okorocha is positively brimming with ideas, being a man of ideas, and his ‘ideas are like bullets. They pierce greatly.’ Wonderful. With ideas like that, who needs great ideas?

    I thought that was bad enough. Then I heard during the week that another governor, Wike of Rivers State, has given sixteen jeeps to National Assembly members who come from Rivers State. Each vehicle, we are told, is valued at N45m only. Ladies and Gentlemen, do you remember the National Assembly members we are talking about? Do you remember that these are people whose remunerations far outweigh the carrying capacity of the country? So, believing they were not receiving enough, Gov. Wike goes and takes pity on their over-pampered estates by throwing into their pockets his own costly mites of jeeps. Where does he want them to put those jeeps in their compounds bursting with the stuff?

    It’s not as if I’m complaining or anything; I’m just drawing attention to the whole setup of governance in Nigeria, and how our leaders are brimming with ideas that shoot through the air like bullets to help us. Did you say these are extremely poor ideas that should shoot through the owners’ feet? I would agree with you if I was just an observer. Sadly, I am not an observer since they are my countrymen.

    It reminds me of a post in my phone in which someone had asked for help because a certain someone dressed in no recognisable fashion was a lawman in his country. There was an accompanying photo. Someone had replied him that he regretted he could not be of much help because someone dressed in the recognisable fashion of drug dealers with layers of neck chains and finger rings and bracelets was a governor in his own country. There was also an accompanying photo.

    When I read these reports of what our governors were up to, I believed I should do a lot more than agree with someone’s opinion; so I went to a quiet corner and laughed my head off. It was important that no one should see me do it in public because then they would remind me, ‘this is no laughing matter.’ As if I didn’t know. I know it’s a lot more; it is a veritable circus show! I tell you, it is a happiness show!! Gov. Okorocha is right; we do need a director for this great national circus!!!

    Where else but a circus will you find a governor erecting statues of his foreign cronies in his state but in Nigeria? Oh yes, it happened in Gov. Okorocha’s Imo State. By the way, I saw the post of the statue pulled down with its face downwards. When I saw the post, I understood the meaning of the phrase, ‘biting the dust’. I really did wonder what took the people of the state so long that they actually allowed the statue to stand there looking at them for more than a day. I hear the governor has promised to build more statues. Hmm. Perhaps this purpose will be fulfilled on the heels of the appointment of his sister to express his happiness.

    In this same national circus, we have another governor who is well renowned for refusing to pay his workers’ salaries, for which reason people are dying. However, I hear he has assured the whole country not to worry about his re-election. He would return, he has been heard to boast, by the power of his guns and millions. I also heard that he had a trial run of this tactic at a governorship election recently where he showed those millions. I’m not sure but I think people said his millions lost, as did his party.

    Anyway, it seems to be clear that governance has become a show in Nigeria; a circus show. The leaders are no longer content with swilling champagne in the mornings, riding in their heavily tinted jeeps and making ordinary people trot alongside them, or scattering the institutions they meet on ground while building nothing. No sir; now they want more. They want to be thoroughbred clowns, tightrope walkers, fire-ring jumpers, lion tamers and commanders, elephant riders and pole gymnasts. So, you see, this circus is well set up. What we need now is someone to direct it for us because it seems the clowns are weeping and the animals are beginning to get on each other and the poles are still short and there is chaos everywhere and the audience seems to be waiting and no one seems to be able to call anyone to order and…. Oh, what’s the point of it all?!

    The unfortunate thing is that the audience, when not wracked with laughter, are also helpless. Since they have only come to gaze at the animals, they do not believe they should help them. Clearly, the animals are in trouble, but who is to say? Who will impose the needed order? We need order here, and fast. When a happiness ministry is being created for a land full of hungry people, there is definitely a problem. What are we going to discuss in that ministry? Will it also have directors? Perhaps, we will have a director of goals, director of smiles, director of cleanliness, director of sorrow banishment… What exactly? Where exactly does addressing hunger come into the picture?

    There is a quote that says if you can still keep your head in the midst of this confusion, then you do not understand the problem. Now think of the reverse. If you have lost your head in the midst of this confusion, then the problem has clearly overwhelmed you. It would be a lot better for those who have lost their heads to run away from leadership positions. Unfortunately, that will describe over half of Nigerians. I think the country will be the better for it if that number will just take a simple bow and go sit in the side lines. Then we will recognise them easily enough as the ones who have lost their heads.

    When we have a Minister for Circus Affairs, his/her job will be to continually sieve the people to know who to throw on which side. I think I will like to be thrown on a nice cushy seat at the back in the shade from where I can watch ideas whiz past the leaders’ heads, like bullets. I suspect it looks a lot like what I am already doing; but what do I know?

  • How not to be a gentleman and other (un)social etiquettes!

    …The fine print of a larger law says gentlemen do not abuse the accounts of their offices or the other privileges of those offices. The finer print of that law says that abusers are liable to be called Common Thieves.

    I have many observations on the male race in Nigeria, mostly because I am not a member. My most profound discovery about them is that nearly every member of that group does not have a single idea what it means to be a gentleman. Just check out the traffic. Many men, even men-in-black, can be seen struggling for the right-of-way with every other road user, lady or ruffian. I have searched in vain for those I can call knights-in-shinny-armour to redeem the race. All I see around me are men in burnished armour. Nearly all of them appear to be versed in the veritable art of how not to be a gentleman. You are offended? Wait then till I ask you this: how many of our men, not counting your fashionistas, know how to sew a button on their most beloved shirt? Most Nigerian men cannot tell one end of the needle from the other. Yet, the book of etiquette says ‘a gentleman knows how to sew on a button’.

    For that matter, how many of our men know that a gentleman should always walk behind a lady, except of course when there is danger? There you are, none of you! Most men have no idea that they are supposed to walk in such a way that they shield their lady from all dangers, oncoming or from behind. Alas, your Nigerian men appear to need the shelter that women provide; that’s why they make women walk behind them. Yet again, the book says a gentleman always walks behind a lady.

    There is a rule in the book of social etiquettes that says men ought always to give their lady friends flowers to mark a variety of occasions: Christmas, birthday, baby bearing, apologies, weekend get-away, valentine, request-to-be-mine, apologies, valentine… Now, all those men who gave their ladies flowers this last valentine should please stand up. That’s what I thought: two men out of one hundred and something million (or whatever you think the population of the country is). Haba! Did you say something about giving flowers not being in our culture? Mmm! I always wondered why the Almighty caused the silly things to grow around here, seeing they are really not part of the culture of Nigerians. You know the way one would hold a baby’s heavily soiled nappy when it’s full of the stuff? That’s how a Nigerian male holds flowers when he is giving them to a lady. He thinks it’s more than his reputation can withstand to be seen doing that. The only time I received a flower in my house was the year I made a lot of noise about it. Since then, there has been a flowery silence.

    From this book of social etiquettes for men, I also see that gentlemen are not expected to leave dirty crockery around. Ha! That is the one I love most. I wait for the day when Nigerian gentlemen will finish their dinner and promptly see that there is no dirty crockery lying around, not just by instructing the little ones to deal with it but by rolling up their sleeves and plunging their hands into the soapsuds. In the meantime, we must continue to watch as Baba Wande finishes his dinner and slides off the table end of the conversation, in person, particularly when he ignores the thin voice of the woman wailing about ‘who will wash these plates’. Well, sometimes, the cuckoo waltzes home and daddy decides of his own freewill to clean up. Such days are rarer than finding ruby on the beach; that is why there usually is a song and dance about it when it happens. Even the neighbourhood knows there is something different in the air because the voice of the turtle is heard clearly in the land.

    Once, I came upon a woman who, unprompted, quickly explained that the father of the house was cooking dinner that evening. I never asked her. I rather think that she needed to explain why she was in the sitting room that dinner preparation hour, rather than in the kitchen. I have not been able to decide whether that was occasioned by guilt or a need to fill the time, that she had normally used for pottering around the kitchen, with words.

    By far the most profound of the How to be a gentleman’s rules is that gentlemen are expected to laugh and talk quietly. Actually, I think that is where we all fail, both men and women. This abuse of noise is something that is very Nigerian. From waking time to sleeping time in this country, there is no abating the noises buzzing and belching out of every religion-linked loudspeaker, record dealer, passenger canvasser, beer parlour adherent, irate husbands, termagants, and all else. To a man (and woman), Nigerians are just mindless noisemakers. One day, we really should talk about why we have not all become The Walking Deaf in this country.

    Most importantly, my book revealed that real gentlemen do not abuse expense accounts while on business trips. This is the fine print of a larger law that says gentlemen do not abuse the accounts of their offices or the other privileges of those offices. The finer print of that law says that abusers are liable to be called Common Thieves. I don’t think this rule was written with Nigerians in mind exactly. If it was, then it has fallen flat on its face. Nearly every facet of Nigerian life is peopled with men who do not only abuse their expense accounts, they actually insult them. That exactly is the bane of public life in this country: the fact that Nigerians do not really know the meaning of the epithet Common Thief. Actually, being called common is an abuse that real gentlemen dread for it implicates plainly that one has no sense of refinement, is a black soul, or that one is worth less than the grass he walks on.

    Unfortunately for us all, Nigeria is not a class-minded society. Perhaps, once upon a time in its history, it used to be. At that time, there were behavioural expectations for every segment of the tribe. What qualified one for membership within that segment was no more than conformity to the rules. Aberrations were not only frowned at, they qualified one for exclusion from the segment. That was class behaviour. It did not depend on money; it depended on a certain mental tuning and keying in to a particular degree expected of one.

    Now, the diffusion that came through the modern life-style has restructured the society to the Haves and the Have-nots. The Haves are those who can rub two kobo together, say the magic words and bring out millions of Naira, while the Have-nots are those who do not know the magic words. Unfortunately, either by coincidence or luck, the magic words are known only to the nation’s leaders, the Haves who use them to abuse expense accounts, insult charge accounts, assault subventions, batter budgetary allocations and clubber the country. Now, those are the common thieves who cannot be called gentlemen. Does it then follow that the Have-nots are gentlemen? I honestly don’t know; do you?

    By the above accounts, therefore, a gentleman is someone who seeks to maintain class behaviour that hinges on responsibility. To say that Nigeria needs gentlemen in its public offices (and private ones too) is an understatement. Responsibility allows one to choose that action which can be called the thing to do, you know, the gentlemanly thing. That is what makes a society successful, when it can count on its public citizens to be real gentlemen.